The quotes below (and other references cited at bottom) are one reason why I believe in social entropy. Another reason is I believe in the Bible (as far as it is translated correctly) particularly in the need for a Redeemer and Savior. In that regard, America today not only resembles Rome in its’ Decline but Jerusalem in its’ as well. The concepts by Le Bon, Bernays (an American New York advertising agent), Frederick Taylor (American creator of Scientific Management) et al were used by Hitler and Goebbels to foment the rabid Nazification of the Third Reich. Perhaps the reader sees a pattern here – particularly since the majority of Americans persist in living under the “New Normal” of a seasonal flu. I witnessed the below as a candidate for political office within the GOP. The same obviously applies exponentially to the DNC. One of the maddening things about the American people is we continue to believe that without membership in one or the other of these clubs, we have no voice in “self” government. What an oxymoron! Washington is groaning in his grave!
Doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result is said to be the definition of insanity. If every legal, voting American registered Independent or No Party we would remove the vise grips off our political testicles and make them answerable to us. The fear of The Lie (of Party membership) is what keeps us in their shackles. Cast off those shackles the way Americans have shaken off the shackles of union membership. The same logic applies.
The first quotes define the crowd which segues into quotes explaining the political consequences – proving that we are indeed “governed by our character.”
Gustav Le Bon, The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind; 1938
“The crowd is always intellectually inferior to the isolated individual.”
“Crowds display a singularly inferior mentality.” – p. 9
“History tells us that from the moment when the moral forces on which a civilization rested have lost their strength, its final dissolution is brought about by those conscious and brutal crowds known, justifiably enough, as barbarians. Civilizations have only been created and directed by a small intellectual aristocracy, never by crowds. Crowds are only powerful for destruction. When the structure of a civilization is rotten, it is always the masses that bring about its downfall.” – p. 19
“Men never shape their conduct upon the conduct of pure reason.” – p. 22 [Note: An exception is the First Continental Congress – and that only partially.]
“The most striking peculiarity presented by a psychological crowd is the following: whoever be the individuals that compose it, however like or unlike their mode of life, their occupations, their character, or their intelligence, the fact that they have been transformed into a crowd puts them in possession of a sort of collective mind which makes them feel, think, and act in a manner quite different from that in which each individual of them would think, feel and act were he in a state of isolation.” – p. 29
“In crowds it is stupidity and not mother-wit that is accumulated.” – p. 32
“The first determinate characteristic unique to crowds is each individual acquires a feeling of invincible power which frees him to act on instincts he wouldn’t if alone. The presence of others gives him anonymity and removes responsibility. The second characteristic is contagion. Every sentiment and act in a crowd is contagious – a form of hypnosis in which the individual surrenders his personal interest to the collective interest. The third characteristic is suggestibility. The magnetism of the crowd puts the individual in a special state of mind like hypnosis. He is no longer conscious of his acts but acts upon irresistible impetuosity.” – p. 34
“In crowds the foolish, the ignorant, and envious persons are freed from their sense of insignificance and powerlessness, and are possessed instead by the notion of brutal and temporary but immense strength.” – p. 57
“An orator wishing to move a crowd must make an abusive use of violent affirmations. To exaggerate, to affirm, to resort to repetitions, and never to attempt to prove anything by reasoning.” – p. 57
“…nothing is more fatal to a people than the mania for great reforms, however excellent these reforms may appear theoretically.” – p. 7
“The divine right of the masses is about to replace the divine right of kings.” -.p.17
“The advent to power of the masses marks one of the last stages of Western civilization. A complete return to those periods of confused anarchy…”
“A knowledge of the psychology of crowds is today the last resource of the [politician] who wishes not to govern them. – nor to be too much governed by them.” – p.21
“A crowd is always ready to revolt against a feeble and to bow down servilely before a strong authority.” – p. 61
“To know the art of impressing the imagination of crowds is to know the art of governing them.” – p. 80
“People are governed by their character, and all institutions which are not modeled on that character merely represent a borrowed garment, a transitory disguise.” – p.101
“In the past, the action of governments and the influence of a few writers and a very small number of newspapers constituted the real reflectors of public opinion. As for “statesmen”, far from directing public opinion, their only endeavor is to follow it. They have a dread of opinion, which amounts at times to terror, and causes them to adopt an utterly unstable line of conduct.
The opinion of crowds tends more and more to become the supreme guiding principle in politics. … today, politics are more and more swayed by the impulse of crowds, who are uninfluenced by reason and can only be guided by sentiment.
“The passing of these innumerable series of legislative measures, all of them in a general way of restrictive order, necessarily increases the number, the power, and the influence of the functionaries charged with their application. These functionaries then become the veritable masters of civilized countries. Their power is all the greater owing to the fact that, amidst the incessant transfer of authority, the administrative caste is alone in being untouched by these changes, is alone in possessing irresponsibility, impersonality, and perpetuity. There is no more oppressive despotism than that.” – p. 234-235
“The incessant creation of restrictive laws and regulations, surrounding the pettiest actions of existence with the most complicated formalities, inevitably results in the confining within narrower and narrower limits in which the citizen may move freely.”
” Victims of the delusion that Liberty and Equality are better assured by the multiplication of laws, nations daily consent to put up with trammels increasingly burdensome. Accustomed to put up with every yoke, they soon end by desiring servitude, and lose all spontaneity and energy. They are then no more than shadows, passive, unresisting and powerless automata.
“Arriving at this point, the individual is bound to seek outside himself the forces he no longer finds within himself. The functions of government necessarily increase in proportion as the indifference and helplessness of the citizen grow. The State becomes the all-powerful God.”– p. 236
Other than being informed as to the source and tactics of crowd molding, one can do no better to counteract this insidious invasion of our independence than by getting to know the Savior and inviting his Spirit as a constant guide and companion into our hearts and minds.
Other Sources:
Edward Bernays, Propaganda, 1928
Serge Chakotin, Rape of the Masses: The Psychology of Totalitarian Propaganda, 1939
Eric Hoffer, The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements; 1951
Edward Hunter, Brainwashing; May 1956
NetFlix: Social Dilemma; written by Orlowski, Coombs, and Curtis
Mickey Edwards, The Parties vs. The People
